Firewife (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Making her fiction debut while working on her Ph.D. in East Asian lit at Yale, Choong, a Malay-American, riffs on myths of fire and water as manifested in eight contemporary women's lives. An Indian woman Lakshmi (or "fire"), marries a man for passionate love and ends up having a forced abortion (because she is carrying a girl) and being burned alive (after refusing her brother-in-law sex ). In an awkward framing device, her soul finds Nin, a 31-year-old Malay-Chinese-American photographer who, as a memorial to her little sister, Mien (who drowned at a tapioca factory at five), undertakes a six-month globe-spanning journey to complete the FireWife project, a "personal photo essay" documenting the lives of such women as young prostitutes like Ut (innocence) and Table (stability), and the anorectic data-entry worker Maria (mother). There are eight women in all, each presented in incantatory first person, alternating with chapters from Nin. Nin's mission connects her to what seems distressingly like an eternal feminine conflict between desire, exploitation and self-debasement, one that recalls Nin's own struggle with survivor's guilt after Mien's death. The connection is tenuous, and the journey can be hallucinatory and downright mystifying, but it's also often forthright and sexy. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Choong's first novel draws on the ancient Chinese mythology of struggle between the archetypal forces of fire and water, with outcomes affecting each protagonist so that the extreme passion of fire-love shapes the life of one and deeply flowing water-love defines that of another. The travels of photographer Nin, who suffers long-standing guilt over her sister's drowning, awakens her self-awareness. She leaves her husband and California corporate life, eventually realizing that she is "four parts fire having to live the life of four parts water" and that her "FireWife journey" means living as she truly is. Her global quest for images of women's stories becomes personal as she encounters Zimi, who lives in Taipei by leasing her forehead for advertisements promoting "Tampax Tampons 2 for 1," and the girl known as table, who works naked as a table for sushi dining. While serving lascivious Tokyo businessmen, table escapes reality by imagining herself studying fashion design in New York. Such marginalized lives, depicted in Choong's sparely elegant, flowing prose, become icons of society's disposal of women. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400096839
• ISBN-13: 978-1400096831
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,517,340 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tinling Choong Gives a Voice to the Silent, February 10, 2007

By	Ann Brandon - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: FireWife (Hardcover)

In her fictional work, FireWife, Tinling Choong writes in a wide variety of voices. In one part she reveals the squirming stillness of a woman who lies naked on the floor, serving as a sushi table for the Japanese businessmen who surround her. Choong dives into the thoughts of a Bankok prostitute celebrating her fourteenth birthday with a fly, who is boxed in the window with her. Some of the women are living with deep control, others explode into flames, once literally.

Tying their lives together is Nin, who travels the globe to photograph women and to discover her true self, as a woman made up entirely of fire who is living the life of water. Fire is adventurous, masculine, sexual. Water is placid, accepting, a homebody. She spends days on planes going through sometimes hilarious machinations as she attempts to explore her soul without self-emolating.

Nin spends 1/25th of a second with the various women, whom Choong then brings to life for the reader. As a result, at the end of Nin's journey, I felt I had more insight than she did into her genius in finding women who needed to be recognized. I also felt like a voyeur, seeing deeply into the psyches of those Nin had merely captured as an aesthetically interesting snapshot.

What I especially love about this book is that Choong gives a voice to those we never hear about, that we only know about through Ashley Judd's travels exposing the horrors of sex workers, or through a hint that businessmen traveling to Bankok also can indulge in old-fashioned flesh pots that only hire girls barely out of puberty. I know of the sushi table from a T-shirt a student wore to class. (I have since banned offensive t-shirts.) But my reactions--Oh the poor child prostitute! Oh the hapless naked sushi table!--are from a distance. I feel now my sympathy has depth to it and that I know them as no longer "them", but "us".

Choong can write these different voices because her own is so literary and varied, being distinctively staccato at points, arching at others. If you love language, if you love exploring ideas about reincarnation and living in the truth, and if you love diving into another's mind, you're really going to love FireWife.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Rendered Voices, March 8, 2007

By	Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: FireWife (Hardcover)

I married a wonderful Chinese woman who does not hesitate to remind me (when necessary) that she is a dragon of the element fire. So when I saw a little book entitled Fire Wife, there wasn't much chance I would pass it up.

To be honest, I don't always connect with books that are grounded in Eastern mysticism. I'm not a big believer in the cyclic, fateful view of the world that is at the heart of many Eastern beliefs. And I certainly don't have the ingrained feel for it like my wife has. However, this book has the advantage of being bold in its use of these themes, unlike many other books that use them more subtly, where they seem out of place.

The general plot of this book is that Nin, an architect for a international restaurant chain, takes a leave of absence from her job so she can pursue photography. As she travels, she encounters different women, who tell their stories as Nin takes their pictures. Each woman has a unique voice and tells her story well. But this book is really about the higher, more spiritual encounters that take place and, ultimately, how they impact us.

I can't claim to be completely won over by this book. I am too far from the world she is trying to render. Still, it is beautifully written and brief enough that I didn't regret the experience. I would have gotten more from the story, perhaps, if the "prologue, misplaced" had appeared in its proper place since it clarified things for me, but why quibble? It tells its story well.

3.0 out of 5 stars The right book for the right audience, April 23, 2008

By	armchairinterviews.com (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

FireWife illustrates the common female tragedy of global maltreatment, primarily in developing and Third World countries in Asia.

Rooted in Choong's updated Chinese foundation myth wherein Woman awoke inside the Egg of Time and pushed it apart to form the heavens and earth, the particular "uniqueness" felt by the archetypal abused woman is, in this novella, translated into spiritual superiority connected to the Creator Goddess, Nuwa of the Egg, representative of Womankind. The abuse experience is reconciled in a woman through experiencing the pain of other women and embracing it as a common circumstance. Woman achieves flight like a firebird as an adult through orgasm and the freedom of sprit it releases to join with the Goddess, Femaleness, and the strength of Fire. The endgame in which Fire defeats Water is lesbian sex: spiritual and physical union with a female spirit and the foundation myth. Womankind's plight is One and it is Life.

The superstition that protagonist Nin can release women's spirits with a camera as she photographs them, culminates in her own mental transition as she studies and snaps them. Nin photographs six women and communes with a spirit girl that travels between time dimensions to facilitate Nin's integration of a larger female wisdom with dreams and visions after she witnesses abuse.

The novella is blunt yet artistic in graphic depictions of female atrocities - rape, murder, a woman ignited with kerosene for her assertiveness, a 5-year-old girl drowned in tapioca pit dross, obscenities, sexual abuse, masturbation, lesbian events, and sexual intercourse. A powerful scene is one in which rich Japanese men eat sushi from the back of a naked woman on hands and knees - a human table, the chauvinistic tradition of Nyotaimori. The maltreatment of women in this novella is repugnant, but unfortunately, also from the pages of truth. Nyotaimori has reached California, where a woman can be hired as a table or sell her forehead for ad campaign space, as is the fate of another of Nin's subjects.

Men and women interested in feminist activism will value this book. It is their clarion call. This book might also be a good college text for a class studying the subject.

Armchair Interviews says: Very unique subject matter that will find a place with a specific audience.